Chapter 9: Changes (Gloam Striders)
Draven thought of his little stolen egg hidden behind the table. The mother dragon was furious.
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The story so far in Chapter 1-8: Drave encounters mysterious Dawn Bringers who can walk unharmed in sunlight and learns that bonding with dragons is the key to unlocking ancient portals between distant regions of his world. Driven by grief and curiosity, he secretly works with his friend Kael to translate forbidden texts, uncovering lost knowledge while tensions rise within Stonehold between religious factions. Ultimately, Draven risks his life to steal a dragon egg from a dragon’s (shadow-crawler) den.
Nox let Draven into the hold. “Again, drav? Ye better stop this nonsense.”
Draven couldn’t talk, his vision going black from fear, post adrenaline rush, and heat exhaustion. He sat down in the gloriously cool shade of the covered hold, breathing heavily.
Nox pursed his lips and shook his head, handing over his canteen again.
Draven drained it and his own.
Slowly he started to cool down.
Nox crossed his arms. “Ye have a death wish. I hope yer not looking for those sun shades again.”
Draven knew he better quell any possible gossip now. “I was on a supply run, Nox. Ye know I do it once every few spans.”
He pulled the umbrathorn thorns and tusks out of his bag to show Nox.
Nox’s eyebrows rose nearly to his hairline. “Witherwing tusks? How’d ye manage that?”
Draven shrugged, putting them back. “Luck. But it made me late on the return.”
Truth.
Of a sort.
Nox whistled. “Well, I guess that’s a decent reason. Goddesses, give me some of yer luck. Those’ll fetch a good price.”
Draven nodded.
Once his breathing had slowed and his vision quit swimming, he went to the cistern and drank several more canteens of water, then returned Nox’s full.
He clapped Nox on the shoulder and tipped his head left. “The path keep ye.” And strode off.
But he didn’t go to the market to sell anything yet. He had the crawler egg, a dragon egg as the Ancients called it, and he wanted to see if it had survived his mad dash from the angry mother.
He went to his unit.
Locking his door, he carefully opened his sack and unwrapped the egg from its protective casing of hard leather and material. And he breathed a sigh of relief. It was intact.
The shell shimmered with iridescent purple, and the glowing violet lines along the surface seemed to pulse. He had to admit, it was very pretty.
He placed it into a small crate, nestled on a pillow.
Then he pulled Kael’s translations from the hidden cubby and reviewed the section on collecting dragon eggs again. The text said the shadow crawler egg had to be kept cold, shielded from sunlight, and left in darkness.
Reading further, he found descriptions of the other two types of dragons on Solnoc. The radiance dragon eggs, gleaming gold in the illustrations, required constant warmth and direct sunlight. The void dragon eggs, shown as black as the abyss, had to be kept on ice.
He turned off the few moon lamps in his unit, which only shed dim light anyway. The light from the ice wall was sufficient for his excellent night vision.
Then he pushed the crate up to the ice wall, which was plenty cool.
Gloamers didn’t mind the cold. It didn’t seem to affect them much. In a land of twilight and night and ice and snow, it made sense that the shadow crawlers were the same.
He sat down on the floor next to the crate and laid his fingers on the egg. The shell was soft and smooth. A vibration came from within that sent a shiver through his hand.
“Well,” he said, “I guess we’ll see what comes out of that shell.”
At the sound of his voice, the creature inside seemed to shift again and another vibration ran up his arm.
Maybe it was stressed. Or anxious. He’d given it quite the jolt with that mad escape run.
Stressed? Anxious?
He ran a hand down his face and laughed bitterly to himself. What was happening to him?
How could he already be caring for a creature he’d never seen, from a species that he both feared and hated?
He barely recognized himself anymore from the man before the arrival of the Dawn Bringers.
After the death of Myra, he’d been a husk, dead inside, and just going through the motions. All he’d cared about was doing his duty for chief and hold, and perhaps the vengeful killing of as many shadow crawlers as he might ever be able to. He saw now that bitterness and anger had been slowly eating him up inside.
Now he was trying to hatch a crawler, to care for it, and bond with it?
A memory of Solari passed through his mind, with her little golden baby dragon, Aurela. The feeling of that dream, of Aurela speaking into his mind, made goose pimples rise on his arms.
What was he about to become? And what would his choices do to his hold?
There was no way the chief or Gloamers would accept anyone keeping a pet shadow crawler in the hold.
Would he have to leave Stonehold?
Sadness twisted in his gut.
This was his home, and his people. It was all he knew.
He didn’t know what was in store for him. But now wasn’t the time to answer any of it, so he pushed it from his mind.
He had set out on the path, and it was done. And if he succeeded in hatching the crawler, then he would use the Aether Arch to visit the Radiance Striders’ land, and then the caves of the Void Striders. And he’d bring back more useful information for his people to prosper.
He looked at the egg again, then laid his hand back on it while reading a book.
He didn’t have boundary duty on the eighth day of the span either, so he stayed in his unit, watching over the egg and not leaving. He was afraid to leave it alone.
By the middle of the second cycle, the egg started to change. At first a little, but then unmistakably.
New, fine lines of light bloomed beneath the shell. The purple pearlescence deepened. And the creature inside continued to stir when he touched the shell or spoke to it.
So he decided he must have the right temperature for it.
He combed over the translations about what to feed it. They mostly ate regurgitated meat from the mother’s kills, as well as her milk.
He swallowed.
He definitely didn’t have female crawler milk. He hoped chewed meat would suffice.
Late in the cycle, a knock sounded, and he stood from the egg laden crate with a snap, his head jerking toward the door.
What would he do if the Veil Keeper returned with a warrant to search his premises again?
His heart raced as he threw a blanket over the crate and pushed it behind the table.
With a shaking hand he unlatched the door.
But it was only Kael.
He breathed out in relief and let him in.
The librarian bustled in. “Hey, drav. How are ye? I have more of those…” He paused, one eye watching the door close all the way first, then continued, “translations. These are about how they train their dragons to fly.”
Draven laughed, the sound thin and frazzled.
Kael nodded. “Right? Yeah, I know. How can one fly on one when they die getting anywhere near it?”
Draven crossed his arms. He should tell Kael about the egg. But could he trust him not to lose his mind in fear? Shadow crawlers were the one creature every Gloamer was rightly afraid of.
Kael laid out the new sheets on the table as Draven deliberated what to tell him.
Before he could speak, the librarian said, “And ye won’t believe this, but I tell it true, that annoying Veil Keeper got a warrant to search my unit too.”
Draven’s mouth hung open. “By the Ash, ye can’t be serious. Umbrist Sidero raked through yer things too?” Then one of his eyes flicked to the translations, while his other eye stayed focused on Kael.
His friend understood the question. “No, no. He didn’t find any of this. The book is safe, yeah. Ye see, I kept it all hidden in the library vault.”
“But,” Draven said, relief washing over him again, “can he get a warrant to search the library vault?”
Kael’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t think so. The head of the library, Ashroan, he is close with the chief, who I don’t think would risk angering Ashroan.”
Draven ran a hand down his face. “But are ye sure?”
Kael hesitated. “Well, I don’t know. Should we move it all here?”
Flipping through the new translations, Draven groaned. “Maybe. He’s already been here and found nothing. Maybe it’s safer. He’s trouble.”
“Well, that’s the truth plain as night.” But he didn’t sound relieved about it. Kael’s hands twitched and he fiddled with his tunic. It was evident he was stressed. And who could blame him.
Those sunsick religious fanatics were concerning. The breach of privacy and personal rights alone was something that prior the chief never would have approved. But now he did, out of fear of the supposed Second Unraveling.
The religious groups were growing in power.
It wasn’t just Draven that was changing. The hold was changing. And he didn’t think in all good ways.
It was then that Draven decided to wait longer before mentioning the egg to his friend.
He didn’t know if it would even hatch, since he had no idea what he was doing, so it might die and all these worries would be for nothing. There was no sense stressing his friend more for no reason.
So he said, “Bring everything here, and I’ll hide it for now. But we may need to move it somewhere in the forest instead, to keep it out of their hands.”
Kael looked up from the translations then, gray eyes wide. “Oh, ye didn’t hear?”
Draven blinked. “Hear what?”
“There’s a shadow crawler that came last twilight and roamed back and forth outside the hold, roaring and screeching, and digging at the doors. It’s very, very angry about something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know what has it all fired up. Ye seriously didn’t know? Where have ye been?”
Draven ran a hand down his face. “Just… ah… resting here.”
The librarian nodded. “Ye know that happened once many seasons ago when someone took an egg for the chief. But nobody did this time.”
Draven’s blood went cold. “Maybe it’ll go away?”
His friend shrugged. “Maybe. Everyone is worried, because how can we hunt and gather? We’ll starve in here if it doesn’t leave soon, yeah.”
Draven thought of his little stolen egg hidden behind the table. The mother dragon was furious.
And it was his fault.
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Author Note:
Image made with Midjourney.
I have written about the world building of this story here.
This is also being published at Royal Road.